


Parted in two and a blotch of ink

by Clementive



Series: Marked and Bound [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Alternate Universe - Spirits, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Magical Tattoos, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Souls, Spirit World, Supernatural Elements, Tenten (Naruto)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29889612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clementive/pseuds/Clementive
Summary: When Sai yearned to be human, they parted in two as if they were. And there was a blotch ink as if they were soulmates.
Relationships: Sai/Tenten (Naruto)
Series: Marked and Bound [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2198691
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Parted in two and a blotch of ink

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the March Madness, prompt: Soulmates

Tenten lowered her face to the arm of one of the bodies, closing one eye to admire the translucence of the skin. Uneven, she judged. Underneath the skin, the veins and arteries gleam in constellations of contrasting colours, not yet pulsing. She cocked her head to the side and clicked her tongue. Definitely uneven. 

“Hurry up,” Sai said from behind her.

Annoyed, Tenten glanced up at him. A book hid his face. A book from the mortal world, worn in its edges, inhabited by the imprints of the souls who had touched it. She didn’t even know how he could find those books. 

‘ _Unless he’s travelling down there._ ’

Tenten pursued her lips, uneasy.

Sai never bothered to hide them. He read at their working station. He read in his quarters. He read during councils and receptions where new souls were formed. No one, except her seemed to feel the danger of it. She could feel Sai slipping, torn between this world and the mortal one. The world they built. The world he was made to build. 

Yet, Tenten didn’t say anything. 

She felt that if she did, she would have to question how him reaching down to humans’ traditions unsettled her. How his smiles unsettled her now that they were copied off human faces.

“Patience is a virtue,” she answered instead with a crooked smile and rolled her chair away from the body. 

Humming to herself, she grazed with the tip of fingers the tools laid out on her working table. The blue fire of her forge cast wild shadows over them, sparkling red like a beating heart, and there she hesitated. Was there anything to fix Sai? To make him stay. 

She could carve out smiles. 

She could carve out humanity with her swords, scalpels and hammers. 

She could forge anything. 

Tenten shook her head, feeling Sai’s eyes on her. She chose a small scalpel.

When she returned to the body, she stood over it and placed a hand over its blank forehead. Involuntarily, she looked at the body she forged first. Mortals were always born in pairs; their souls also bound in pairs. 

Tenten retrieved her hand, stung. 

Spirits came to life alone. 

Delicately, she accentuated the curve of the inner forearm, slicing down the skin the way she beat it into shape; with echoing rage, with splittering fire.

The fire boomed, crackled, dripping into the carved out space between the walls and the floor, until it surrounded the room. The room filled with tendrils of smoke, heavy with the smell of lead and fire and ash. She stepped away from the body, admiring it. Admiring the two of them. Finally even. Finally perfect to be born. 

“Your turn,” Tenten said stiffly. 

The scalpel hissed in the bucket of cold water and she sat farther away, her chest painfully tight. She tasted metal at the back of her throat. The fire receded and grew extinguished. When she heard Sai slip off his seat and approach the body, she tried to relax.

She knew one day he would be gone, and she would pair with another soul binder. 

Her back to him, Tenten wiped at her hands with a rag. She wiped and wiped, too angry, too sad. She had no muscles to work the tension out of. She had no weary bones to crack and let rest. 

She had no one, not even her partner. 

‘ _Spirits come to life, alone, one at the time_ ,’ she repeated to herself and she felt none of her usual reassurance at the notion.

“I’ll bind them together now,” Sai said he smiled, uneven, his skin taut at the corners of his mouth. Tenten didn’t even need to look at him. She knew. He looked grotesque. He looked human. “You’re not watching today?”

She almost ignored him, but she felt him move closer, silently, his hands already dripping ink. 

“What’s your design for them?” she asked roughly, but she didn’t turn around. 

“A dancing bear.”

She nodded, tearing at the rag. She tossed it in one of the baskets under a table. Things appeared and disappeared in their working station. Their wills conjured them up and they erased them when they were no longer needed. 

Maybe that was what she was to Sai now, no longer needed. Erased. 

He came closer, his pale face reflecting nothing, carrying nothing. Like hers. They belonged here, she almost yelled. 

“What soul mark would you want if you were human?”

“What?” she snapped, looking back at him with narrowed eyes. 

His eyes disappeared in tight slits, his mouth stretched long and thin. 

“I would want a blotch ink. Nothing elaborate.”

Her face darkening, Tenten imagined carving out a body and his face into Sai’s. She imagined a soul binder, drawing his soul mark. She imagined him paired with another body. 

She imagined him human, with his smiles and aloofness, and she felt nothing but emptiness.

“You’re not human,” she said, ashen. 

“I could be.”

He tried another smile, but it barely lifted the corners of his mouth. It fell flat between them. His hands dripped, diluted ink, between them. It swirled, the colour deepening. Sai didn’t look away from her. 

The room was now cool, dark.

“Bind them,” Tenten said flatly.

His eyes sharpened.

“It could be us,” he whispered.

“No, it couldn’t. I forge bodies. You bind souls,” she shouted, gesturing helplessly at everything that surrounded them: the fire, her carving tools, the ink, his brushes. “This is what we are… spirits. Why can’t you accept this? Why are you so obsessed with humanity?” her voice boomed then cracked on the last word. 

Tenten panted, watching him. He didn’t bulge in his smile. He didn’t bulge in his posture; he slouched like he had a spine. She curled her fists at her sides. 

“Remember. A blotch of ink,” he said simply and approached the bodies. 

The room dimmed for him.

Sai marked the bodies with his usual long strokes, the ink from his hands dripping on his brush. When the marks were complete, they gleamed and sparkled, blinding, and tendrils of colours stretched from each mark until they joined. 

Tenten watched the process, her eyes burning. 

They weren’t joined like this.

They were timeless. 

They were born alone. One after the other.

“Remember,” Sai repeated from where he was sitting, and Tenten turned away from him, her whole being burning up. Pieces of her rattled out of place, particles misaligned. 

She startled.

Pain. Was that pain?

Tenten ran, panicked, almost stumbling out of their working station. Shakily she held out her hands. Unmarked, unblemished, inhumane, and yet out of place. She looked down, her gaze attracted to something dark. Her foot. There was a drop of ink on her foot. She looked back, her mouth outstretched to demand answers. 

‘ _What did you do to me? What did you do to us?_ ’

Sai was gone.

She followed suit.

**Author's Note:**

> Tenten, the whole time: 


End file.
